The 2025 Project Nocturne Awards: Control Over Noise
Horror in 2025 was everywhere, but not all of it was purposeful. The most effective work across film, television, and games shared a common discipline: control. Control of tone. Control of performance. Control of escalation. The Project Nocturne Awards exist to recognize horror that understands restraint as strength, and craft as the difference between impact and excess.
What follows is a category-by-category recap of the eight selections that best represented where horror stood this year—and where it appears to be heading.
Best Horror Video Game — Silent Hill f
Silent Hill f reaffirmed the franchise’s relevance by abandoning nostalgia in favor of atmosphere and cultural specificity. Drawing from Japanese horror traditions, the game leans into implication rather than spectacle, allowing unease to accumulate through sound design, environment, and psychological pressure. It restores Silent Hill as something quietly corrosive rather than overtly shocking, proving the series still understands how dread actually works.
Best Horror TV Series (New Show) — Alien: Earth
Alien: Earth succeeded by applying discipline to a franchise often tempted by scale. The series places ordinary people inside systems designed to fail, allowing tension to build through confined spaces, bad decisions, and prolonged anticipation. When the horror surfaces, it feels inevitable rather than performative. It’s a confident translation of Alien’s core strengths into long-form storytelling.
Best New Horror Villain — Aunt Gladys (Weapons)
Aunt Gladys emerged as one of the year’s most unsettling villains precisely because she resists easy definition. She operates through familiarity, authority, and tonal instability rather than overt menace. Her power lies in how effortlessly she shifts between eccentric warmth and calculated cruelty. The result is a character who destabilizes every scene she enters without ever needing to announce herself.
Best Supporting Actor — Amy Madigan (Weapons)
Amy Madigan’s performance in Weapons is central to the film’s effectiveness. As Aunt Gladys, she brings a level of control and specificity that shapes the tone of the entire story. The performance moves fluidly between humor and threat, often within the same beat, and the film’s tension is inseparable from that precision. It’s a role that demands restraint, timing, and confidence—and Madigan delivers all three.
Best Actor — Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)
Michael B. Jordan’s work in Sinners stands apart because it isn’t a single performance—it’s two. As twin brothers, he creates distinct emotional identities, rhythms, and moral centers without leaning on gimmicks or surface differentiation. The tension between them becomes the film’s backbone, turning a genre story into a character-driven conflict. It’s a technically demanding performance that expands what the film is capable of holding.
Best Director — Zach Cregger (Weapons)
Zach Cregger earns Best Director for executing one of horror’s most difficult balancing acts. Weapons blends dread and dark humor without allowing either to undercut the other, maintaining tension even when the film permits moments of levity. His creation of Aunt Gladys is a defining act of authorship—an original character whose tonal elasticity becomes the film’s sharpest tool. Cregger’s control is evident in every major choice.
Best International Horror Film — Bring Her Back (Australia)
International horror delivered some of the year’s most disciplined work, but Bring Her Back stood apart for its clarity and force. Anchored by a devastating performance from Sally Hawkins, the film grounds its brutality in grief and moral fracture rather than excess. Directors Danny and Michael Philippou continue to assert themselves as major voices in the genre, pairing emotional punishment with tight command of pacing and escalation. The film is uncompromising without losing focus.
Best Horror Film — Weapons
Weapons emerges as the year’s most complete horror film by committing fully to character, tone, and control. It introduces an original villain who feels sharply defined and genuinely unsettling without relying on predictable horror cues. The film balances horror and dark humor with precision, using comedy to sharpen discomfort rather than release it. Its characters are shown in full—imperfect, reactive, and recognizably human—which gives the film real stakes. The ending lands with a mix of shock, humor, and sadness that feels deliberate rather than indulgent. Weapons understands exactly what it is doing, and it never loses its grip.
Closing Thoughts
The Project Nocturne Awards are not about consensus or momentum. They reflect a point of view rooted in craft, performance, and intent. Horror remains at its strongest when it resists noise and embraces discipline. This year’s winners prove the genre still has sharp edges—when the people behind it know how to use them.
About the Project Nocturne Awards
The Project Nocturne Awards are shaped by conversation, debate, and shared standards — not algorithms, campaigns, or consensus chasing.
Team Nocturne approaches horror as critics and lifelong fans, weighing craft, performance, storytelling, and intent over box office totals or social media noise. These selections reflect collective discussions across film, television, and games, informed by different perspectives but guided by the same belief: horror works best when it’s deliberate.
Eligibility is based on U.S. theatrical or streaming release dates within the calendar year, regardless of earlier international premieres. The awards are subjective by design. They’re meant to be thoughtful, opinionated, and engaged with where the genre actually is — not where marketing says it should be.
This isn’t about declaring “the best” in absolute terms.
It’s about recognizing work that treated horror seriously — and trusted its audience enough to do the same.
